This was stated by Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry during an emergency meeting of the bloc held in Doha, Qatar, in which he called for a unified stance in favor of rescheduling negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia until a balanced agreement is reached.

The foreign minister clarified that his words were ‘not to be understood as an attempt to create alignment against a brotherly African country,’ but as a call for Arab solidarity with Egyptian-Sudanese efforts.

‘We insist on exhausting all possible diplomatic avenues, that is why we are here,’ he stressed.

The trilateral standoff of more than a decade around the GERD continues to stall without tangible progress, but the Ethiopians are moving ahead with the construction of the 74 billion cubic meter reservoir and plan to carry out the second filling next July.

Egypt is demanding, above all, a binding legal agreement to regulate the dam’s operation and water storage processes, in order to protect its rights over the Nile River.

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